The Next Ten Years in British Social and Economic Policy

I set about writing this book because, whether I liked it or not, I
had been compelled by the movement of events to think out
afresh my social and political creed. I do not mean by this that
my fundamental views had changed; and certainly I have no
dramatic act of conversion to offer to my readers. But I did feel
the need to start thinking again as near as I could to fundamentals; and I felt this none the less for being fairly certain that
the result would be not a recantation, but only a restatement of
the old conclusions. In one sense—the more basic—my political
opinions remain what they were; in another sense they are a good
deal altered. I have been a Socialist for about twenty years, and
I am, if anything, rather more a Socialist than ever; but my
conception of Socialism has changed perforce with a changing
world. The problems of to-day are not the problems of twenty
years ago; and the solutions that then seemed all-important now
look, in some cases, almost irrelevant. And, above all, the people
have changed. The new generation is, in certain respects,
markedly unlike the old.

This, of course, is not at all surprising. Twenty years ago,
Socialism was still in the main an exercise in fantasy. It was
already exerting a powerful influence on the movement of social
policy, and much legislation contained a socialistic element. But
the complete adoption of Socialism as a way of ordering the
community's affairs was not within the region of immediate
practical politics. In Great Britain the Labour Party was still a
weak third party, hanging on to the Liberal coat-tails; and the
Labour Party of those days was at most but semi-Socialist even

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.